A state official said Tuesday that the average residential customer would pay $1 to $1.50 more a month under the governor's plan to dramatically expand solar power.

But Mark Sylvia, commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources, said Massachusetts residents would get cleaner air, a more diverse source of electricity, and more jobs.

For our money, that's a good investment.

Massachusetts now ranks fourth in the nation on solar jobs, according to The Solar Foundation. The number of people employed manufacturing and installing solar energy grew by 1,900 in 2013 — a 42 percent increase — to a total of 6,400.

Environment Massachusetts released a report last year which emphasized that it is not the availability of sunlight that makes states solar leaders, but the degree to which state and local governments have adopted effective programs.

Close corporate loopholes

Recent revelations that a 10-year-old federal law, intended to penalize CEOs whose companies shift their legal addresses to tax havens, isn't working should prompt Congress to strengthen the law.

But don't count on it.

Bloomberg News reported last week that a fresh wave of companies has fled the U.S. system to avoid hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes.

For example, when New Jersey drugmaker Actavis changed its incorporation to Ireland, it helped its CEO avoid the law's bite by handing him more than $40 million of stock as much as three years ahead of schedule.

The 2004 law has "clearly been a failure," said Edward Kleinbard, a professor at the University of Southern California. "And it now has the perverse result of putting money into executives' pockets sooner."

Since 2012, at least 13 large U.S. companies have announced shifts of legal address to lower-tax nations, such as Ireland and Switzerland.

During an earlier flurry of corporate flights to tax havens, Congress acted. "These expatriations aren't illegal. But they're sure immoral," said Charles Grassley of Iowa, then the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee.

Of course, companies try to avoid taxes because the U.S. corporate income tax rate of 35 percent is among the highest in the world, although many companies end up paying less.

Lawmakers in both parties have endorsed tax code changes that would lower the rate below 30 percent. Unfortunately, those proposals have been stymied over details.

Meanwhile, some multinational corporations have found enough loopholes in the U.S. tax code that they have paid little or no federal taxes.

Struggling college grads

No one should be surprised that recent college graduates are having a tough time landing good jobs.

A Johns Hopkins survey of 450 recent graduates found that only 50 percent were employed full time, 26 percent were working part time, 6 percent were unemployed and 6 percent underemployed. A full 60 percent of those who were working received an hourly wage, averaging just $10.23 per hour.

A recent study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York also found:

The underemployment rate of recent college graduates increased from 34 percent in 2001 to 44 percent in 2012.

Recent college graduates working part-time rose from around 15 percent in 2000 to 23 percent by 2011.